Above, an example of the nine-planet crest of the Hosokawa clan, as seen in the Asian Art Museum’s new exhibition Lords of the Samurai, via the museum’s excellent new blog. The exhibition, which I saw when it opened a couple weeks ago, is just fantastically cool, and the crest, which appears over and over again, is just a small part of it.

Now I know what you’re saying: “But Heath, how could this ancient crest depict nine planets when Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930? Are space aliens involved? Or perhaps time-traveling robots?” This is Japan we’re talking about, of course, and one should not immediately discount science fiction-related explanations.

You’re also probably asking: “What exactly does this have to do with nonprofit communications?”

The answer to that second one is, of course, not much. But it’s Friday afternoon, and someone foolishly decided to leave me with the keys to the blog, so please read on for more examples of the crest, and for the truth about the time-traveling robots.

Being the good internet person that I am, I asked the editors of the blog, who happen to be curators and whatnot at the Museum, about the history of the crest, and they let me know that the nine planes are actually representative of the nine grahas of Indian cosmology, each of which is a “‘cosmic influencer’ on the living beings of mother Bhumidevi (earth)”, according to Wikipedia. So there’s planets in there, five of ‘em, but also the Sun and the Moon and two positions in the Moon’s path– turns out “planets” isn’t the best translation, but it’s pretty close. Which is somewhat complicated, but also very cool. As cool as time-traveling robots? Maybe not, but very cool nonetheless.

The rest of the objects exhibition all come from the collection of the Hosokawa clan, a family of powerful military nobles. The current head of the clan, Morihiro Hosokawa, was Prime Minister of Japan in the early 90s, and has since taken up pottery, which is a traditional pastime for the men of his family. Some of his work is in the exhibit. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?

Something else I learned at the exhibition is that George Lucas is a thief. Seriously:

I had no idea. Also, note the nine-planet crest on the chinpiece. Pretty cool, huh?

Tags: asianartmuseum, hosakawaclan, nineplanetcrest, samurai

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 3:32 pm and is filed under culture, design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.